Bonanza ("He Was Only Seven") and Little House on the Prairie ("He Was Only Twelve"): Identical scripts, with only minor changes for names and for the most part minor plot details, all centering on a young boy being mortally wounded when walking in on a bank robbery. The bulk of both scripts see the major characters (in both cases, Michael Landon is one of them, Little Joe in Bonanza, Charles Ingalls in Little House) and a couple of allies track down the bank robbers, using subtle clues to stay on the trail until finding the bad guys hiding from the authorities in a remote town. Both shows end with a major fight, with the father of the wounded boy going into a trope-befitting trance-like state and choking the leader of the gang into near unconsciousness and not letting go until the father's friend shouts at him, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET HIM GO!!!!"

In the Bonanza episode (aired in the spring of 1972, toward the end of the series' run), the father was played by Roscoe Lee Browne, who in his trance-like state choked out the leader of the bad guys gang, and it was his grandson (who died) who took the tragic role. On the Little House rewrite, aired in 1982, Landon's Charles Ingalls character took on the BSOD role, and his adopted son James (Jason Bateman) was merely badly wounded but never dies (at least that's what viewers are led to believe at the end of the episode's hour-long coda, which follows the climatic BSOD scene); it was Mr. Edwards who shouted at Charles to break out of his catatonic state and let the bad guy go and let the authorities deal with him.

An episode of Prison Break sees the usually unflappable Michael Scofield flapped big time. He becomes catatonic and sees himself in a cell with a deceased inmate who helps him snap out of it.

Season one has a subversion. The only way Michael was able to get into the psych ward to reach a specific inmate was to fake having a psychotic break while he was stuck in the hole. Once Michael got inside, he went right to work as if nothing happened, despite pulling off the infiltration involved him breaking his own hand by repeatedly punching a brick wall.

Ami/Mercury suffers one in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon when she believes she killed Usagi after all while under the control of Kunzite and the Dark Kingdom. She is conscious and responsive, but useless as she refuses to move or do anything and has to be dragged about by Usagi who did not die.

The Doctor has had several over the course of 32 seasons and 900+ years:

The 10th goes into one of these in The Stolen Earth.

It is arguably worse for Sarah Jane Smith, who witnessed the creation of the Daleks, and Captain Jack, who was killed by the Daleks. He got better.

The entire human raceexcept for Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister (Yes, we know who she is) has one when humanity surrenders to the Daleks and there is no sign of the Doctor.

Also in Bad Wolf, when he freaks out after Rose is apparently vaporized.

It's not a traditional BSOD, but the 10th Doctor's whole "Time Lord Victorious" insanity after losing a few friends and companions too many has to count — and it is frightening to watch.

Later, in "The End of Time", he has a similar moment when Wilfred Mott knocks four times, signalling his death.

The 4th Doctor had a memorable one in Genesis of the Daleks when, at the very point of being able to destroy the Daleks at the point of their creation, finds that he's unable to bring himself to do so despite being urged by his companions to go through with it.

The 5th Doctor also starts to BSOD when Tegan abruptly leaves the TARDIS at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks.

As well as at the end of Earthshockafter Adric is killed.

The 6th Doctor has a moment at the end of Trial of a Time Lord part nine, when he is shown footage of his companion Peri being gunned down and killed (this was later revealed to be a hoax).

The 1st Doctor arguably has one at the end of The Daleks' Master Plan. "What a waste... what a terrible waste."

The Eleventh Doctor gets a short one of his own in Victory of the Daleks.

Another, much worse, hits him in A Good Man Goes to War, when he gets an absolutely scathing What the Hell, Hero? and realises how the rest of the Universe sees him: as an insanely dangerous warrior. We have yet to see the aftermath of this one.

We get to see the aftermath in the Let's Kill Hitler prequel, and it's not pretty.

And again, in Angels Take Manhattan. He's still not over it by the Christmas Special.

And again, in The Name of the Doctor, briefly, after Clara tells him his greatest secret is discovered and he has to go to Trenzalore.

The 3rd Doctor goes into a self-induced coma in Inferno after witnessing a parallel world and its people be consumed by lava. Which, incidentally, lead to a fear of fire The Mind of Evil, that according to the books lasted at least until his eighth body - hundreds of years later. And judging by snippets of War-plagued Gallifrey seen in the Series 3 finale, the fear is still there.

Eleven's companion Amy gets one in "The Impossible Astronaut", after the Doctor is apparently killed.

The season 1 finale, when Buffy hears the prophecy that she's going to die.

In the episode "Ted", when Buffy believes she's just killed her mother's new boyfriend.

She has a brief BSOD in season 2 when she realizes that it was her having sex with Angel that caused him to lose his soul and become the evil Angelus once more.

The events of the Season 2 finale cause her to do the "Walk into the mist" version of this trope.

Giles has one in the season 2 episode "Passion" after discovering that Angelus had murdered his girlfriend, laid her corpse in the bedroom, and set up everything to look like she had planned a romantic encounter for the two of them. When he comes out of it, he's...a little different for the rest of the ep.

Dawn undergoes one in "Blood Ties" when she finds out that she is the Key and begins to doubt her own existence and humanity.

In the season five episode "The Weight of the World", the idea that a moment of doubt had caused her to fail in her mission to protect Dawn caused Buffy to mentally check out for several hours, scaring the heck out of her friends and requiring magic to snap her out of it.

Most of Season 6 is this for Buffy after having been brought back to life and taken out of Heaven. She is finally snapped out of it by Spike in "Once More With Feeling"

Spike also snaps her out of the one she suffers when the Scoobies turn on her in Season 7 and she's thrown out of her house by her own sister.

Angel at the end of Season 8 after realizing he killed Giles.

Angel has these practically Once a Season. Sometimes caused by remorse over his own actions, other times brought on by a century-long stay in Hell which leaves him a trembling mute.

Angel after Connor is stolen and Angel realizes there is nothing more he can do.

Angel has a nasty one at the end of Season 8. After he's freed from Twilight's control, the shock of what he's done which culminated in him killing Giles leaves him a comatose mess by the end of it.

Angel suffered from one of these when he encountered a powerful demon that seeks out true heroes and terminates them. The demon looked him over and walked away. He is later told the demon eats the hearts for their actual meat, and didn't take Angel's because his was "a dried up little walnut."

Let's not forget what happened after learning he couldn't cure Darla of her terminal disease, and then was forced to watch her become a vampire again. And then of course there was his reaction when he learned that Wolfram and Hart could never truly be destroyed, leading him to actually give up on everything and sleep with Darla just to try and get rid of his soul because he'd lost all hope. And then there's the time his own son was stolen from him and sealed away in a hell dimension...

Angel's large amount of these was lampshaded when Spike joins the cast.

Angel "I spent a hundred years trying to come to terms with infinite remorse! You spent three weeks moaning in a basement, AND THEN YOU WERE FINE! What's fair about that?!"

Connor had a huge breakdown at the end of season 4 after feeling that Jasmine was just using him, which combined with all the stress he'd suffered in the past year, lead to him taking several people hostage and trying to kill them as well as himself.

And most notably, pretty much everyone went through this after Fred died. Some worse than others, like Gunn and especially Wesley.

In a first season episode, Commander Sinclair is kidnapped, drugged, and interrogated by a bad guy of the week who wanted to know why Sinclair disappeared at the Battle of the Line, the climactic final battle of the Minbari War, which Sinclair blacked out during and has no memory of. While in this state, he discovers what happened to him (kidnapped, interrogated, and brain-washed by aliens), escapes from his captors, and spends some time in a state of drug-induced confusion, evading and fighting against B5's station security as they try to rescue him. Only Delenn is able to snap him out of it, which is ironic as she was one of the interrogating aliens.

Londo gets two of them concerning his lover Adira: one when she is poisoned, and the other when he learns that Morden is responsible. Both instances are accompanied by revenge with style.

Garibaldi has a more literal one after Bester's implanted orders trigger, forcing him to report his findings to the Psi Corps; literal in the sense that his brain really is pretty much locked until Bester releases it.

He then has a more traditional one after Bester releases him from this state and he is faced with the realization that he just betrayed everyone and everything he cares about and none of his friends are going to believe him or ever trust him again.

Ivanova has one when Marcus dies to save her. Apparently life-long BSODs as she leaves Babylon 5, and at the series finale is still alone and still grieving.

Delenn BSODs when Anna Sheridan arrives and remains in a semi-BSOD state during Sheridan's first death. So does Ivanova.

Vir has one after killing Emperor Cartagia, to the point of Drowning My Sorrows that evening. Given the Dirty Business of that particular act, Londo tells him to embrace his guilt, because it proves that Vir is still a good person.

He really has two, although the first is very short. After the first two die, he starts to go into one, but JD snaps him out of it by pointing out they would have been dead much earlier if he hadn't done anything. Only when the third patient (who happens to be both the friend and the one that could have survived for at least a few months without the organ transplant) dies does this take effect fully.

Their ability to do so is remarkably potent, considering some folks BSOD just seeing those two episodes.

In the first season, JD has a rival named Nick who appears to be better than him at everything and is poised to become the leader of the group of interns. Unfortunately Nick is a major Stepford Smiler repressing all of his fears and doubts. When Nick fails to save the life of a 7 year old boy, he completely breaks down and afterward quits working at Sacred Heart.

During the final battle with the Reavers in Serenity, River temporarily goes helpless and catatonic as the Reavers' madness presses in on her mind. Only when her brother is shot in front of her does she recover and kick the Reavers' collective asses - single-handedly.

In the season 5 episode "Latent Image" of Star Trek: Voyager, the Doctor is revealed to have done an almost literal (as he's a computer program) version of this (using the Out, Damned Spot! version) following an incident in which two patients were equally at risk and equally treatable; he chose the one he was better friends with, which was contrary to his programming. The memory was erased from his program, and when it was restored he suffered the same condition, but eventually recovered.

Janeway had one of these in "Equinox" when she became obsessed with hunting down Ransom after she found out he was responsible for murdering hundreds of sentient lifeforms. She also went a little crazy in "Year of Hell" and "Scientific Method". See Berserk Button and Mama Bear.

During the first episode of season 5, "Night," Janeway has a major one. She questions why she made the original decision to trap the crew in the Delta Quadrant. Most everyone else suffers one as well, but not as much as Janeway. This happens when they go through a big expanse of space with no stars or planets.

Kirk has occasional BSODs, usually triggered by the death of a Red Shirt, which result in him angsting for about fifteen seconds and then getting over it very quickly after a pep talk from McCoy. Spock has a much bigger one in "Amok Time" after apparently killing Kirk, and almost quits Starfleet. He presumably has another one offscreen some time between the end of the series and the first movie, and does quit Starfleet!

Kirk has a very short but intense one after David Marcus is murdered by Klingons.

In the episode "The Doomsday Machine", Kirk and company find the mostly-destroyed starship Constellation with one crew member aboard, the commander, Commodore Matt Decker (played by William Windom). The ship had been wrecked by a wandering robot Death Star shaped like an evil cannoli; the crew died after abandoning ship, beaming down to a planet that was then eaten by the berzerker, leaving only the Captain still aboard the ship. The entire episode concerns Decker undergoing a three-part Heroic BSOD, first babbling over the loss of his crew and the monster ship ("They say there's no Devil, Jim, but there is... RIGHT OUT OF HELL I SAW IT!"). The second part is his commandeering the Enterprise to try to destroy this overwhelming monstrosity, and the third is when he steals a shuttlecraft and dies in a kamikaze attempt. Considered by some Trek fans to be the most awesome performance in the history of the series.

Kirk has had the distinction of being one of the first people to cause this to happen to actual artificially intelligent computer systems themselves.

Sisko had a few moments of depression during the Dominion War. Plus a minor breakdown after Jadzia's death. He was like this for years after Jennifer's death, only coming out of it when the Prophets told him to stop living in the past in "Emissary".

Trip went into shutdown mode for at least a season after his little sister was killed in the Xindi attack.

Picard had one after being captured by the Borg, and had to go home to France for a little while to recover.

One episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation had a number of alternate universes' Enterprises gathering due to a problem involving Worf. One version was manned by just Riker and Worf who existed in a universe where the Borg overran everything and was going mad.

Supernatural loves these. It also loves never really making them better, either:

John had his after his wife died, causing him to drink and treat his sons like soldiers.

Sam had his after his girlfriend died, causing him to be just as obsessive as John was about hunting this demon.

And Dean? Someone dies to save him in a Season One episode, John dies to save his life in the Season Two premiere, Season Two completely breaks him down in as many ways as possible and all of it prompts a suicidally-guilty breakdown in which, after Sam dies, Dean sells his soul in an incredibly poor and desperate bargain to bring him back.

Sam has this briefly after realizing that killing Lilith actually set Lucifer free. He can do nothing but sit on the floor and stare in horror as Ruby monologues until Dean bursts in and they kill Ruby together.

Castiel after finding out that God really doesn't care. He loses his faith in everything, even Dean, and disappears, only to show up completely drunk next episode. Which led to a Crowning Moment of Funny: "I found a liquor store. And I drank it!"

Admiral Adama in Battlestar Galactica has a huge one after his best friend reveals himself as a Cylon and tells Adama to use him as a bargaining chip during a Mexican Standoff with Cylons. Although Adama has displayed intense emotion over key events before, this time he destroys his office, drinks an entire bottle of liquor, and is reduced to weeping nearly incoherently in his son's arms.

Adama had several in the final season. He got into a fist-fight with Colonel Tigh when he found out Tigh had knocked up a certain Cylon prisoner. Tigh retorted that Adama was endangering the fleet by pining for the missing Laura Roslin. He actually gave up his command to sit alone in a Raptor and wait for her. Also, when forced to confront the fact that Galactica was on the verge of structural failure, and that Roslin was dying, he collapses while defiantly trying to fix the cracked wall in his quarters. It was a bad year.

His son doesn't lack for them, either - he has one in the second season, when he decided he found out that his father had ordered his best friend to kill a senior officer: he promised to be her backup, couldn't do it because he got blown out of his ship first, and decided to die at that point. And then comes Kara's death in Season 3.....

Hell, after Revelations there is practically a fleet-wide BSOD. Roslyn says frak this to both politics and prophecy, declaring the whole search for Earth and her role in it a "farce", Dee shoots herself, Adama tries to commit suicide-by-Cylon by trying to goad Tigh into shooting him etc.

Colonel Tigh has one of these very briefly in the third season while still on New Caprica, immediately after he discovers that his wife has been feeding information to the Cylons. Following all of this, he totally Took a Level in Badass.

Athena has one when Boomer takes revenge against her for stealing her life. She gets brutalized, tied up, and stuffed in a closet where she is forced to watch helplessly as Boomer has sex with her husband, who can't tell the two apart. Boomer then kidnaps their daughter and successfully escapes the ship. When Athena realizes the full extent of Boomer's actions, she breaks down in Helo's arms only pulling herself together for the rescue mission.

Juliet, after they faced Yin - her trauma due to the incident carried over into the following season

Gus, in the episode "This Episode Sucks" when he was accidentally spattered with blood. He came out of it by slugging Shawn in the chest.

Lassiter, in the episode "Shawn Gets the Yips" after his car has a run in with a very solid concrete barrier.

Happens to Stevie in Malcolm in the Middle when he learns his mother had abandoned him. He also regresses back into speechlessness and refuses to move anything other than his fingers (to operate a text-to-speech machine).

Lois also experiences something similar shortly after Jamie almost kills her by knocking a shelf on her, feeling she is severely underqualified to become a mother. The BSOD was so bad that it actually resulted in Francis, the one child who hates Lois the most, having to convince her that she is definitely qualified to be a mother, while in emotional pain about having to admit it.

Probably the most painful, though, is Malcolm's in the third season, after being dumped by his girlfriend.

Boukenger does this with Masumi a few times whenever Yami no Aiba appears to fight him. However none were as bad until the last stretch of the series where after supposedly beating him, the guy still lives and forces Masumi to use the Artifact of Doom to beat him. This leaves him out of action in Heroic BSOD as Satoru disappears in the worse time as well. However they came back just in time to save the world.

In Kamen Rider Faiz, Takumi had one when he thought that he was the one who attacked the Ryuseiji on their reunion night and when his friends found out he was an Orphnoch, going as far as almost joining Lucky Clover however he got over it just as Yuji suffered from a permenet one when Yuka was gunned down by police after being tortured and experimented on.

Then again Takumi didn't want to be Faiz anyway....

In Kamen Rider Kiva, Wataru has two of these: once when Nago Keisuke brutally attacks him with his own "Garulu Saber" and again when Bishop awakens his Fangire blood, causing him to attack his friends. He got better.

In a flashback in the Season 1 episode of Heroes, "Company Man," Claude has one right after his partner, Noah Bennett ("HRG") shoots him. He puts his hand to the wound, stares at it for a moment, and then looks back at HRG, who shoots him two or three more times. Suddenly, Claude's present misanthropy and lack of faith in humanity makes a lot more sense.

In Carnivāle, Apollonia is in an Angst Coma after giving birth to Sofie who was conceived via rape at the hands of Justin Crowe, thus bequeathing Sofie an avataric nature, which means her birth is traumatic to her mother, as per the show's mythology. Whew!, and Sofie herself experiences an Heroic BSOD after her mother dies.

In Generation Kill, Sgt. Colbert goes into a BSOD after he grants Lance Corporal Trombley the authority to shoot what Trombley identifies as enemy combatants. The "combatants" turn out to be kids with camels, who eventually end up at the Marine camp after getting zipped with Trombley's SAW. Also a total Tear Jerker.

Happens again later. Walt Hasser, also a good shot with a SAW, jumps the gun on firing at an incoming car at the Marines' blockade, aiming for, and hitting, the civilian driver before anyone attempts a warning shot. Colbert wigs out, made worse by the fact that Colbert's "Iceman" reputation would mean something that bothers him at all is really terrible, certainly doing nothing to help Walt's ensuing BSOD over the incident.

Both of these instances turn into "Oh, shit" moments when you read the book, and realize these events actually happened.

Happens to Dr. Shepherd in Grey's Anatomy when he loses a pregnant patient, is sued by her husband, and learns that he's saved fewer patients than he's killed.

Happens to another "Dr. Shephard" in LOST: Jack goes into a really serious one in the season three finale's flashforward. ("We have to go back, Kate! We have to go BACK!") We only learn that it was Locke's death that caused it in season five.

While we're on the subject of Lost, let's mention Michael who might be the show's punching bag as he goes through the entire series stuck this way because of his son Walt.....after all, he spends half an episode calling "Walt!" in several different screams and shouts. Walt getting kidnapped turned him slightly normal....although it ended up him going slightly The Dragon. Let's face it, Michael's death was the best thing that happened, because, well, his character wasn't all that useful, other than being an in-universe joke on why some people really shouldn't be parents.}

Ben too, suffers from this....although his is more of a ABSOD. As he's a liar, evil, delusional, manipulative...need I go on? He does get better though....kinda.

Locke does as well....but that isn't so much a BSOD, since he's not exactly a hero.

In Being Human Mitchell has one when he has to turn a small boy whom he had befriended into a vampire to save the boy's life. This results in him breifly going back to the vampire community.

Annie has one when she realises Owen killed her. Then again shortly thereafter when her attempt to get revenge backfires and he ends up "reminding" his "new" girlfriend about their affair while Annie was alive. The fiance's delivery is creepy enough that Annie's reaction ended up being an accidental case of Enforced Method Acting.

George after seeing Annie sucked through the door in the second season finale. He snaps out of it pretty promptly when he realises Mitchell's still inside.

A very understandable one in NCIS, when Gibbs is suffering amnesia all the way back to his Gulf War days, and his Mentor tells him what happened on 9/11/2001.

Tony in the season 7 premiere when he believes that Ziva is dead.

Jimmy in the 12th season episode "We Build, We Fight" when he learns that Breena has gone into labor; Gibbs knocks him out of it with a Gibbs Slap.

Happens several times in House to the titular character. In season 2, he admits he loves his ex-girlfriend and asks her to stay, but she refuses and he's upset for a WHOLE EPISODE. Most notably, though, at the end of season 5 when one of his fellows commits suicide and he starts hallucinating a previous fellow applicant/best friend's dead girlfriend, hallucinates sleeping with his boss and then ends up in a mental institution. Also happens in the season 6 finale "Help Me" when Hanna dies, despite everything House has done to try and save her life.

A particularly notable example happens to med student Martha Masters in Season 7 episode "Fall From Grace" just after releasing the Patient of the Week, a homeless man whose life she's just saved, is revealed to be a cannibalistic serial killer who is being hunted by the FBI for a string of thirteen murders, and who has just escaped them again thanks to her.

Farscape had one at the end of the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries after John stops the wormhole weapon and Einstein takes the wormhole knowledge out of his head. John collapses and Aeryn gets as upset as we ever see her, sobbing over his body. It takes him a while to snap out of it. John's comatose state could also be seen as a form of BSOD.

Chiana also spends most of the last act of Peacekeeper Wars in BSOD mode after D'Argo dies.

D'Argo spends the second half of "Suns And Lovers" drunk and despondent after finding out that Chiana- the woman he hoped to marry - has been having sex with his son.

Stark gets a really terrible case of this at the end of "Self-Inflicted Wounds," when Zhaan dies. Not only does his misery carry on into the next episode, but the events of said next episode make it even worse, and it all starts when Crichton tries to cheer him up.

After one of the two Crichtons die Aeryn spends the entire next episode in a state of profound depression, drinking heavily, experiencing flashbacks and hallucinations of the dead Crichton, and swinging between utter stoicism, genuine sorrow, and explosive rage. By the end of this particular episode, she's recovered, but she's now returned to stoicism as a means of coping.

In the NUMB3RS Season Five finale Charlie's usual plot-saving mathetmatical genuis (and indeed his basic coherent function) completely shuts off for a while after Amita is kidnapped.

Charlie has proven prone to Heroic BSO Ds since the first season when he successfully predicts a bank robbery and his brother is shot at. It is then revealed that he suffers BSO Ds whenever someone near him is close to death, such as when his mother had cancer.

In Torchwood: Children of Earth, Captain Jack Harkness shuts down twice. The first time is after his defiance of the Big Bad, the 456, results in the release of a virus that kills everyone in the building, including Jack's lover Ianto Jones. Later, he goes AWOL from Wales, and ultimately Earth, after he kills his grandson in order to save the millions of children who would otherwise have been taken by the 456.

Gwen has two minor BSOD moments in Series 1. The first happens when a man impales himself on a knife she's holding after she believes she's prevented a premonition of his death from coming true. The second happens when she discovers a series of sadistic rural murders have been committed by normal human beings. (She gets over both fairly quickly, possibly because her BSOD face is pure Narm.)

Played for laughs in Jeeves and Wooster. Jeeves had built up a reputation for being the Ultimate Fashion Police (albeit some Truth in Television, as valets were primarily in charge of their master's wardrobes) which usually just amounts to a gentle disapproval of one of Bertie's jackets or hats. However, at least two occasions with Bertie's friends upgraded to Heroic BSOD levels. Bingo's horseshoe-patterned tie sends him unresponsively into the kitchen complete with a Hitchcockian score, and Rocky's remarks about never changing out of his pyjamas almost makes him cry.

The entire premise of Monk is Monk's struggle to reboot from a huge BSOD occurring four years before the series begins, when his wife is killed by a car bomb. Along the way, he suffers from a few minor ones that set him back, but in the series finale he seems to have finally recovered to his personal peak.

King Henry VIII suffers one of these in The Tudors, when his third wife Lady Jane Seymour dies of childbed fever after giving birth to a healthy son. He spends several days (possibly weeks) sequestered with his Fool, drinking, drawing up impossible plans for palaces, and writing the tenets for the Church of England.

In Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Hercules lays on the ground for three days in shock after Iolaus is killed by Dahak. When his efforts to get him back fail, he goes into a more violent outburst.

Friends: Despite being a comedy series a few characters go through this: Monica after she breaks up with Richard and Chandler when Janice and later Kathy cheats on him. Both characters spend several episodes withdrawn, depressed and even after they get over it, still suffer long term effects. (Monica becomes paranoid about dying alone, and Chandler more committment phobic and scared of being hurt). Later, once they've fallen in love with each other, a misunderstanding makes you think they've both hit it again, with Monica running away to her parents and Chandler's emotional break down. Its thankfully averted in the final minutes of the episode.

Ross and Rachel both completely breakdown during their breakup scene in season 3, while Rachel seems to handle it fairly well afterwards, Ross is still visibly depressed throughout the next few episodes.

Despite his insistence that he was "fine", it was obvious that Ross didn't handle Joey and Rachel's short-lived relationship well at all. In fact Ross is prone to these quite often, at the beginning of the series he is still getting over his divorce with Carol, only to suffer more emotional turmoil when Rachel gets together with Paulo. Later on, he has a several month long emotional and mental breakdown after his marriage to Emily crumbles. It looks like it is about to happen yet again in the Grand Finale when Ross races to the airport to tell Rachel he loves her as she prepares to move to Paris and she shoots him down, however much like the Monica and Chandler example above, it is averted in the last few minutes when Rachel gets off the plane.

Hawkeye has a pretty famous one in the M*A*S*H series finale' ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"), where he has a mental breakdown (complete with a paranoid claim that one of the anesthesiologists was attempting to suffocate his patient with the oxygen mask, and a joyride in a jeep through the mess tent), in response to a traumatic experience on the ride home from a day at the beach a few weeks prior. So determined is his mind to deny what it had witnessed, Hawkeye seems to regress into an even more rambling and manic state than usual. He is only shaken back into reality when he is pressed by his psychiatrist Sidney Friedman to recall the pivotal incident on the bus, at which point he breaks down, remembering now in horror a peasant woman having smothered her own infant son out of the fear of being discovered.

The episode "Some 38th Parallels" has Radar (who had earlier helped save the life of a wounded soldier, and then bonded with him, only to learn later that he'd died anyway) experiencing one of these. What makes it especially powerful is that it comes at the end of the episode's tag scene, subverting what initially appears to be a more lighthearted Oh, Cisco! moment with the other characters.

Radar has another one at the end of the Season 3 Finale "Abyssinia, Henry" when the commanding officer Henry Blake who was a sort of a father figure to Radar received his discharge, only to have the plane he was on to be shot down and crash in the Sea of Japan, killing everyone on board. Radar had to deliver the news to the rest of the staff in surgery and suffered such a heavy BSOD that he did not put on a mask while delivering it despite being yelled at to do so.

"Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?" sort of combines this with Napoleon Delusion: a bombardier, fatigued and guilt-ridden over having to kill, snaps and comes to believe that he's Jesus Christ.

In "Heal Thyself", a visiting surgeon appears to be the picture of equinamity and poise, holding his own in the O.R. and swapping wisecracks with Hawkeye and B.J. even as he relates his horrific prior experiences at a front-line aid station. However, as the episode progresses and the wounded keep pouring in, he begins to have trouble sleeping and becomes distracted and nervous while operating. Finally - after being told to take a short break, then vanishing from the O.R. completely - he's discovered hunched down in the Swamp, staring into space, crying, and trying to rub the (invisible) blood from his hands. After he's been put under psychiatric observation, B.J. notes that he seemed "as strong as any of us". "That's what scares me," Hawkeye responds...rather eerily prefiguring his own eventual breakdown.

Private Blythe spends the first night after parachuting into France on D-Day lying in a ditch. Later on, during the attack of Carentan, he becomes psychosomatically blind. Finally, he goes into a serious panic during the battle outside the city, until "woken" back to life by Captain Winters. His story doesn't end too well, apparently the man died of shell shock.

No he didn't. Blythe survived the war and died 20 years later in the 60's. He cut off all contact from the rest of Easy Company and they just assumed he died after Carentan.

Buck Compton shows some signs of going into BSOD when we hear that his girlfriend dumped him while he's lying in a trench in the Ardennes winter. Then it really sinks in when he witnesses two of his friends hit by an artillery shell later in the battle of the bulge. He's never the same again.

"Crossroads" deals with Winters' mini-BSOD, as well as being the first episode where we see signs of Buck's. Winters gets better.

Tom Quinn from Spooks undergoes a BSOD about halfway through Series 2 after a series of missions that put magnets to his moral compass make him grow deeply cynical. Unlike some BSO Ds, he doesn't recover. It comes to a head when he is forced by his boss to effectively ruin an old university professor's life and put his family in extreme jeopardy by having him pretend to sell explosive materials to terrorists. The end of the episode is something of a heroic reformat as he is fired from the team..

Angel suffered from one of these when he encountered a powerful demon that seeks out true heroes and terminates them. The demon looked him over and walked away. He is later told the demon eats the hearts for their actual meat, and didn't take Angel's because his was "a dried up little walnut."

Let's not forget what happened after learning he couldn't cure Darla of her terminal disease, and then was forced to watch her become a vampire again. And then of course there was his reaction when he learned that Wolfram and Hart could never truly be destroyed, leading him to actually give up on everything and sleep with Darla just to try and get rid of his soul because he'd lost all hope. And then there's the time his own son was stolen from him and sealed away in a hell dimension...

Speaking of Connor, there was his huge breakdown at the end of season 4 after feeling that Jasmine was just using him, which combined with all the stress he'd suffered in the past year, lead to him taking several people hostage and trying to kill them as well as himself.

And most notably, pretty much everyone went through this after Fred died. Some worse than others, like Gunn and especially Wesley.

On Merlin - Arthur, after finding out the truth about his birth, and getting the idea that his father is to blame for his mother's death. He tries to kill Uther. It takes Merlin telling him that it's all lies (which it may or may not be-some clearly is and some is uncertain) to snap him out of it.

Arthur gets another one upon catching Lancelot and Guinevere kissing...on the eve of her and Arthur's wedding.

Exaggerated for comic effect in one episode of Roseanne. Roseanne tells Dan she's pregnant, and Dan proceeds to sit in one spot staring into space for about eighteen years.

Really, Topher's entire arc is just a slow sequence of BSODs, varying in degrees of intensity, as he begins to understand his own actions. That is, until his poor genius brain can't take it anymore.

Hotch in Criminal Minds has a pretty major one in "100", after the Reaper kills Haley. After he's finished beating Foyet brutally to death with his bare hands, Hotch blanks out, cradles her body in his arms and cries. That's not to say that it's not completely and one hundred percent warranted, cause damn.

Reid got one of these at the end of "3rd Life" when he witnesses the assassin father murder his daughter's abductor in cold blood despite Reid's pleas not to do it. That BSOD look on Reid's face will haunt you for a while. It's especially bad since Reid has an eidetic memory, which means he can never forget.

Reid has another one of these in "Revelations" after he is forced to watch Tobias Hankel kill a couple that Reid didn't "choose" to save. He watches it on a screen in front of him. When his mentor Gideon finds the camera and speaks reassurances into the screen, Reid doesn't seem to notice as he stares motionless. That BSOD was one of the most haunting moments of the episode for this troper.

In the final episode of Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life On Mars, Gene Hunt gets a world shattering BSOD when he remembers who and where he really is. Gene died as a young police constable in 1953 and has been in limbo in a fantasy afterlife of his own creation where he is the hero he always wanted to be, unable to accept his own death and pass on to the real afterlife. In fact his entire team are also dead coppers who Gene has also kept from passing on until Alex Drake helps them all. Fortunetely he gets better and accepts a new role as a guardian for coppers who die tragically before their time, helping them to pass on with dignity.

Arguably all the characters had a BSOD in this episode. The above is also one for Alex as is discovering she is dead, the videotapes of them being hung, shot and stabbed respectively are BSO Ds for Ray, Chris and Shaz. Reconciliation follows.

In Castle, Detective Kate Beckett is normally the picture of unflappable professionalism. Until "Sucker Punch" where she learns that the Murder Of The Week was committed by the same person who killed her mother ten years ago. She's visibly shocked to her core upon hearing the news and the revelation is enough for her to flee the station and trigger a (near-literal) 10-Minute Retirement.

A minor example occurs in "A Deadly Game" when Castle informs Beckett that he's leaving the precinct and that the case of the week will be his last. Beckett is obviously shaken to her core by the news, and is unusually distracted and uninterested when Esposito and Ryan try to tell her information they've discovered about the case as a result.

Beckett, Castle, Ryan and Esposito all have their own seperate ones when they find out that Captain Mongomery was part of the gang who kidnapped people and played a significant role in the death of Beckett's mother. This is especially so for Beckett and Castle who had to listen to Montgomery die, Castle having been charged with keeping Beckett out of there had to physically carry her out of the hangar and pin her to a car to stop her.

Beckett pretty much has a slow-burning one throughout "Rise", which culminates in her freezing when a suspect pulls a gun on her. Following this, she begins to act increasingly erratic and out-of-control, ranting irrationally at a potential suspect connected to her mother's case and nearly suffering a complete plunge over the Despair Event Horizon when the possibility that she has no leads in her mother's case arises. It takes Castle intervening to persuade her to take a step back from the case until she has a better grip on everything to bring her back to something close to an even keel.

Castle appears to be in the middle of one after he finds out Beckett heard him say 'I love you' when she was dying and she hasn't said anything to him compounded by the fact he found out accidentally by overhearing her talk to a suspect who claimed to have amnesia leading him to the conclusion that not only does she not love him back but she doesn't even care enough about him to tell him she doesn't love him. What makes it worse is that he's pretty much the only thing standing between Beckett and being assassinated (possibly successfully) since he's persuaded her to stop investigating her mother's case for the time being after being told by a mysterious man that if she doesn't, she'll die.

Merlin and Arthur in the 1998 Merlin series. Arthur acts this way for a short while, with longer-lasting consequences, after he finds out that he accidentally slept with his half-sister. Merlin goes into this after he loses Nimue and Arthur.

In the Smallville Season Two finale, "Exodus", Clark Kent has one when his attempt to destroy the ship that brought him to Earth causes Martha Kent to lose her unborn child. He puts on Red Kryptonite, freeing himself of all inhibitions, and runs off to Metropolis, only for Jor-El to give Jonathan Kent temporary Kryptonian powers, allowing him to smack some sense into Clark. However, this act permanently damages Jonathan's heart, leading to his heart attack two years later in "Reckoning". This sends Clark into another BSOD which is only really cured when he has a near-death experience in the episode "Void" and talks to Jonathan's ghost.

He also had these when Chloe was apparently killed in Labyrinth and Bizarro. The first time, the phantom attacking his mind used the illusion to break his spirit and succeeded, leaving rambling to himself that she can't be dead until rescued by Shelby and the Martian Manhunter. The second time, he keeps repeating "no" and his vision blurs, conveniently allowing his superhearing to activate to find her - who is Only Mostly Dead.

In Flashpoint, this happens to the whole team after teammate Lewis Young dies from stepping on a land mine.

And Sam when he bonded with a lonely, crazy ex-soldier and the soldier basically commited suicide in the end while holding Spike at gunpoint, forcing Ed Lane to shoot.

No mention of the last 30 seconds of the season 4 finale of Dexter ? As if he's coming back from that.

How did we miss Ellis Carver's BSOD at the end of the 4th season of The Wire, one of the series' biggest tear jerkers and that's saying a lot. When he's unable to keep the 13-year old Randy out of a group home after he's been outed as a snitch, he completes loses it as he knows the kid's life is ruined.

Michael has one when he sees a small child run out of Junebug's house, while Chris and Snoop kill him and his whole family.

McNulty had a pretty huge one in season one after Kima Greggs is shot and McNulty blames himself.

He also has a major one when he is forced to kill Curtis Manning, in which be breaks down crying, vomits, and tells Bill that he can't do this anymore. It takes a small nuke, literally, to snap him out of it

Chloe O'Brian suffers one when she witnesses Edgar Stiles collapse and die from exposure to nerve gas during the fifth season, so much so that she curls up in the corner of the room and refuses to do anything until a conveniently-present clinical psychologist snaps her out of it.

Played for laughs in one episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Ray sees Robert's girlfriend eat a housefly and gets frozen in place until the end of the scene, which is several minutes. Since an episode is only 24 minutes long, his BSOD lasts probably a good 10-15% of the episode.

Chance has somewhat of a delayed one at the end of the first season of Human Target: after failing and letting his partner get kidnapped, he goes all out rescuing him, and then drops off the face of the earth and joins a remote ashram in Nepal. 6 months later, a client finally finds him, quietly meditating, and drags him back out into his former life.

Marshall of How I Met Your Mother goes into one when he learns his father has died. It causes him to go into a several-month spell where he moves into his mother's house and starts acting like a kid before Lily finally manages to snap him out of it.

Marshall has another of these much earlier when Lily calls off their engagement and moves to San Francisco for an art fellowship. He spends the next few months depressed and a recluse, it takes the entire summer for him to heal ... just in time for Lily to return to try to win him back.

Ted goes into a "denial" version of this after Stella leaves him at the altar and runs away with her ex-fiancée Tony. He spends most of the next episode pretending he is fine while his friends try to get him to express his emotions. He only snaps out of it after finding out she moved in with Tony at his house while she was going to make Ted move in with her in New Jersey. Even after he gets over it, this ordeal clearly has lasting effects on him throughout the rest of the series.

Robin has one when Don accepts an anchor job in Chicago after she had turned down the same job for their relationship. She also has a more mild one after she finds out she can't have children.

It also happens to Abed when he finds out his favorite show has been cancelled and when he finds out his mother wouldn't be visiting him for Christmas.

Mary has one in Soap when Burt, her husband, eventually tells her that he killed her first husband (which isn't a surprise to the audience because he said it aside in the very first episode).

On Home Improvement, Jill gets one after learning her father died. It's made much worse for her over the fact that the last thing she told him was a lie. She gets better after she and her mother are able to comfort each other.

Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy retreats entirely into his own mind (helped along by alcohol) after the abduction of his son his literal catatonic BSOD starts in the last 30 seconds of season 2 and continues throughout the premiere of season 3, with remnants cropping up episodes later as well.

This happens a lot on The X-Files. Mostly because it's a high-stress, high danger job and Mulder and Scully tend to go berserk when they're involuntarily separated as a result. Of course, since they're both highly protective with quick tempers, the sequences usually goes: Bad Event - Heroic BSOD - Roaring Rampage of Revenge. In other words, don't expect either of them to be incapacitated by a Heroic BSOD for long. Run. Run as fast as you can. Whichever one you didn't hurt is going to kill you.

Quincy had a fine moment when Dr. Quincy, in one episode dealing with child abuse, practically lost it and nearly strangled and assaulted a man who had been ritually beating his own son.

On Red Dwarf Kochanski is sent into this state by the squeelookle-ing sewer pipes in "Duct Soup".

Also, Kryten in "Beyond A Joke" after an incident involving lobster and ketchup.

Rimmer goes through Heroic SBBOD "Trojan", due to an excess buildup of resentment. His eyes turn into the "spinning beach balls of death", suggesting that he runs on OS X.

Various storm chasing shows have shown not just the victims, but occasionally the chasers themselves reaching these when a storm turns deadly. On Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers, Reed Timmer has one as he watches a tornado during the April Dixie Alley outbreak.

In I Love Lucy, Fred has one when he realizes he is on the hook for a lot of money. (I think it's the episode where they're buying a car to go to California). He doesn't snap out of it until he's told he isn't on the hook anymore.

The Mentalist - Patrick Jane suffers one when his actions cause a serial killer to torture his wife and child to death. Ends up in the loony bin for a while before a therapist sticks his mind back together.

The Walking Dead - Rick Grimes has a particularly debilitating one, causing him to wander from the group, slaughtering dozens of zombies by himself, and hallucinating a phone call after the death of his wife, Lori.

Warehouse 13's Claudia Donovan is showing signs of this in the third season finale after Steve Jinks's death. The blank look on her face throughout the episode is quite unlike her, and her And This Is for... moment was bone-chilling.

General Hammond resigns from Stargate Command as a result of one too many instances of sending his men into situations that almost gets them killed. Jack, refusing to believe Hammond would succumb to this sort of depression, discovers that the general is actually being blackmailed by the shadowy NCD to quit or risk something bad happening to his granddaughters.

An attempt to create a prototype training simulation using the Gamekeeper's virtual reality chair technology goes horribly wrong when the technology swiftly learns both Teal'c's enormous battle experience and his refusal to ever quit to create a no-win game that resets every time Teal'c loses and refuses to let him escape from the game. Forced to repeatedly experience the SGC's destruction and his own death, Teal'c eventually collapses in a corridor, buries his head in his hands, and just lets the game reset over and over. A winnable scenario is only simulated when Daniel enters the game to offset Teal'c determinator nightmare with his own optimistic personality to create an 'SG-1 unites to save the day' solution.

Law & Order: UK: DS Ronnie Brooks is clearly in the throes of this at the beginning of the episode "Survivor's Guilt", given his stunned, shell-shocked demeanor and his feeble attempts to act like a police officer—"I was first on the scene". As opposed to someone who just endured watching his partner/friend/surrogate son get shot and killed right in front of him and is now utterly bewildered as to how not only did one of the best days of his life—only minutes earlier he had been gushing to his partner about the birth of his grandson—turn into one of the worst, but as to how this hellish experience has come to him again—he's already lost a partner to violence. He has an even worse one after good friend DI Wes Leyton is killed—as this is now the THIRD time he's lost a friend/partner, he comes very close to Falling Off The Wagon, outright buying a bottle of vodka before pulling himself together and walking out of the store.

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show": Mary has one in the. episode "Murray in Love." Lou Grant comes over to Mary's apartment while she is getting ready for a date (in a robe and with a towel on her head). After several failed metaphors, he finally just comes out and tells her that Murray is in love with her and is going to tell her the next day. At that moment, Mary's date shows up. But Mary is too busy having a Heroic BSOD, and she dazedly leaves to go on her date while still in her robe and towel.

The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: "Last Kiss of Summer". Joe Hardy's fiance is killed in a car wreck; she dies in his arms. Next scene is Joe sitting in a police waiting area, staring into space, fighting not to cry, trying to process what just happened, and not snapping out of it until Frank comes in and tries to talk his brother down.

CSI NY Flack finally had one after the downward spiral started by his girlfriend's death in season five. He got extremely drunk, went missing, and worried everyone for a while. He was finally found after ending up at a friend's house, and had to finally accept Mac's attempts to help him through before he lost everything else.

Once Upon a Time: Snow, after tricking Regina into killing Cora. She spends almost the entirety of the next episode lying in bed trying to figure out how to live with herself. Then she decides she can't.

Chuck Bartowski is prone to literal ones in the third season after he first gets Intersect 2.0. His ability to properly utilize the new Intersect is heavily dependent on his emotional state, to the point where it stops working entirely under the correct conditions (his feelings for Sarah in particular tend to cause much of the Power Incontinence). Later in the season, Daniel Shaw invokes this by killing Chuck's father, deliberately sending Chuck over the edge which lasts until Ellie, Devon and Morgan manage to rescue the team and Ellie snaps him out of it.

Chuck also has one at the beginning of season three when he fails Spy training and ruins his chances with Sarah in the process.

Happens a few times on House of Anubis.

Fabian gets this when he learns Jasper lied to him and whenever Nina disappeared.

Jerome also got this once when he discovered Rufus was still alive and that he was working for him again.

This happened to Eddie, too, when he learned his father, Mr. Sweet, was a member of Team Evil.

Game of Thrones gives us Catelyn Stark during the Red Wedding. As opposed to the Freak Out she undergoes in the books after Robb's killed, Catelyn just slits her hostage's throat more out of reflex than revenge, then stares forward blankly for close to ten seconds and not doing anything as one of Frey's bannermen comes up behind her to slit her own throat.

On AMC's The Killing, Holder suffers a really bad BSOD after finding Bullet dead in a car trunk.

From Breaking Bad, Hank has a massive one when he realizes that Walt, his brother-in-law and one of his closest and most trusted friends is the murderous meth-king Heisenberg.

Only Fools and Horses: Rodney went through a fortnight-long one after Cassandra miscarried in the second episode of the 1996 Christmas trilogy, "Modern Men", until he and Del talked about it in the third chapter, "Time On Our Hands".

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